Dog Days

They say that a dog can be man’s best friend. I’m finding that this is true, especially ever since my English Shepherd, Tucker, and I learned how to telepathically communicate with each other. As an example, let me recap a conversation we had this past Friday night.

It’d been thundering and lightning for a few hours when, at about 2:00 A.M., the storm intensified to the point that Tucker woke me up with crying and whining sounds. He was sitting next to my bed, staring at me. I looked into his dark eyes and opened up the telepathic channel we frequently communicate on.

“What’s the matter, Tuck?” I asked.

“I was wondering if you’d like to throw the tennis ball around for a while. I’ll chase it and bring it back to you. I promise.”

“Tucker,” I said, “It’s the middle of the night. I’m not getting up to throw the tennis ball. Now what’s really bothering you? Is it the thunder and lightning? Are you scared?”

“Yes,” he replied sheepishly, betraying the bravado he normally presents to the outside world, “I am.” He lied down on the floor. His eyes were big and dark.

“Well,” I said. “You remember the last time we had a lightning storm? When I told you about how heavier, negatively charged particles fall to the bottom of a cloud, and how a giant spark occurs between these negatively charged particles and positively charged particles at the top of the cloud? And that as long as we stay inside the house, we’re safe and sound?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember all that. That’s not what’s bothering me.”

“Okay, so what is it?”

“Climate change.”

“Climate change?”

“Yeah, climate change. I mean, a severe thunderstorm now?”

“Actually,” I said, “a thunderstorm in October isn’t that unusual around here.”

“I understand that,” he replied. “It’s more the amount of rain we’ve gotten that concerns me. Have you looked at the lake in the backyard?”

“You can’t …”

“I know, I know,” he telepathically interrupted me. “You can’t look at specific events and determine if they’re caused by climate change, you have to look at trends over time. But with the hot summer we just had, and the number and frequency of severe storms, well, they’re all consistent with the model. Look at Debby’s flower garden, how some of her flowers are blooming for a second or third time, apparently confused by the warm weather we’ve been having. Look at the hordes of mosquitoes we’ve had all summer now into the fall. They’ve never been this thick. I know, I run the risk of sounding like Chicken Little, yelling ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling!’ But shouldn’t we at least be having some conversation about it?”

“I suppose we probably should…”

“But we won’t, because we’re so divided, and because the people in power don’t want to do anything about it. They’re making too much money on fossil fuels and such.”

“Well, you have a …”

“And another thing that’s been bothering me.”

“What’ that?”

“These Kavanaugh hearings.”

“What about them?”

“Well, you remember that old Logic textbook you gave me?”

“Yeah?” I said. Tucker raised his back right leg and started licking himself. “Don’t do that.”

“Okay,” he said, and he sat up. “Anyways, Aristotle said the first law of logic is the law of contradiction, that for all propositions p, it is impossible for both p and not p to be true.”

“So?”

“So if we make p be the proposition that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Ford, then ‘not p’ would be that he didn’t. So how can all of these people that thought Dr. Ford was credible and truthful in her testimony, who believe her when she said she was the victim of sexual assault, not believe Kavanaugh was the perpetrator when she testified that she was 100% certain it was him? “

“They say she was assaulted but maybe misremembers by who.”

“But if that were true, if she misremembered who it was, when she says she was 100% certain it was Kavanaugh, then she’d be misremembering the very point of the allegation, of the hearing, which would destroy any credibility she might have. A way to summarize would be: For proposition p where p = ‘Dr. Ford’s testimony is credible,’ you have to believe that Kavanaugh was the perpetrator. Only in the ‘not p’ of ‘Dr. Ford’s’ testimony is not credible’ can you say you don’t believe her. But Republican after Republican came out and said that while they believed Ford, they also believe Kavanaugh. But you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

“But what if, like they said, they really didn’t know who was telling the truth?’

“Then you do what they set out to do, you investigate and try to find supporting factual information that either corroborates or contradicts the accusations. But the FBI ‘investigation’ as ordered by the White House was such a sham that they didn’t even interview the material witnesses let alone any number of other potential witnesses who’d come forward. Now we’re stuck with a sociopath on the supreme court for the next thirty or forty years. Overturn Roe v Wade, uphold Citizens United. We’re looking at a long, dark road ahead.”

A long telepathic silence was finally broken when Tucker stretched out and started chewing on what was left of a rawhide bone. The thunder and lightning had receded, when Tucker telepathically intoned, “Well, I’m getting sleepy. Thanks for the talk. Good night.”

“Good night,” I replied. Soon I could hear Tucker, blissfully snoring on the floor next to my bed. I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, my brain lost in the orange glow of a wide awake nightmare.